


Knuckles

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Crap Building, Gen, Hunter Training, Minor Injuries, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 05:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11177979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: 15yo Sigrun Eide and her best friend are undergoing more advanced hunter training.





	Knuckles

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the letter K in the Alphabet Soup Challenge.

\------

 _Again._ Yes, of course it jolly well hurt, but Sigrun was damned if she would let Tor – correction, Captain Tor – see her so much as wince. Sigrun had used to beat Tor at all the sports even though he was two years older than she was, but he was really rubbing it in her face that he’d made Captain at 17. She was determined to earn her captaincy soon as well, but having to answer to the insufferable Tor in the meantime was a bit much for her pride to handle. She imagined Tor’s face on the wall next to her, changed up her stance and gave the old blockwork wall a one-two punch, a quick right-left. One-two bloody spots left on the wall. She noted with satisfaction that it was taking longer for the scars on her knuckles to open and bleed with each passing week. That meant the regimen was working.

Beside her Dagny wasn’t faring as well. Although she had the stout heart of a warrior, she had the fine-boned hands of a lady. That stout heart was all that carried her through the exercise, because those dainty hands sure weren’t. Dagny was still trying, though, gritting her teeth and screwing up her eyes to brace herself for the impact. Sigrun couldn’t even wince in sympathy, since she was also being watched.

Sigrun and her best friend Dagny were both 15 this spring, which meant they were eligible for the first time for the week-long sorties that took them to some of the old abandoned towns around Dalsnes. While these towns were more-or-less safe due to seventy-some-years of constant patrols, it had become traditional to take the second-year hunters there with the coming of the spring. There they could conduct training and conditioning exercises, and if they were lucky (or unlucky, depending on the predilection of the individual hunter trainee) flush out any groggy trolls unwise enough to come that close to the base.

 _Again._ Sigrun punched the blockwork wall. A time-honoured technique for toughening up the knuckles and hands was punching a cement or stone wall. Sigrun was perfecting her technique for tensing the whole hand, until the sinews and momentum and angle and pure conviction could work in tandem to render a bare hand into a powerful weapon in the arsenal. In theory, even the tiny hand of someone like Dagny, a 15-year-old girl who’d worn gloves her whole life, would be tough enough to do the job if she put enough conviction into it. Like the rest of the class, Sigrun and Dagny had stopped wearing their gloves to avoid sticking to them.

“Enough fun,” Tor smirked, “Dagny, you’re not even looking at what you’re doing, you’re just throwing your punches without paying attention to where they’re going. You’ll just lose your hands, or they’ll be a tasty treat instead of weapons. Hey, speaking of which, time for breakfast.” He handed out pieces of rye bread, chunks torn from the loaf.

“Ack, this bread is hard enough to be a weapon,” Sigrun joked as she chose a chunk.

“Doesn’t stop you going for the biggest piece,” Tor grinned.

“Always,” Sigrun laughed, and shot back an exaggerated toothy grin. Tor blushed and he hurriedly turned to go. Sigrun briefly paused to consider the implications behind the blush, as she tore off a hunk off the heel of bread with her teeth.

Dagny scowled at Tor’s back as he moved away from them. “Tasty treat,” she snorted. “I’m sure they make this bread especially to be an exercise for our jaws to be strong enough to chomp a troll.”

“You never know when we’ll be called upon to kill a troll with our teeth,” Sigrun managed to say while chewing.

That made Dagny grin ruefully, “That would be _you,_ Sigrun, all over.” She winced. “What are we supposed to be doing today, again?”

Sigrun swallowed before reciting, “Day 3. Town reconnaissance, followed by spearfishing, followed by knife-throwing. Mountain climbing tomorrow.” She rubbed the outside of her thigh and tore off another bite. “I hate fishing. All that waiting around, gahh, it makes me crazy.”

“I like it,” Dagny smiled, “but I’m already pretty good at spearfishing. It’s about time we do _something_ I’m good at.” She briefly flailed her bloodied hand. “I like reading the water, and second-guessing where those slippery morsels are going to be before they even know it.”

“Hmmph. I already know I’m smarter than a fish,” Sigrun snorted.

“Oh really? Are you sure?” Dagny giggled as she dodged the handful of mud Sigrun lobbed at her. Her expression turned to concern when Sigrun frowned at the dirt now encrusting her bloody knuckles. “Careful, don’t want that getting infected.”

Sigrun shrugged, “Nah, it’ll be fine, _Mamma_. It’ll just make the knuckles stronger.” She shot Dagny the same toothy grin she’d used on Tor. “Watch and learn.”

Sigrun strode up to the next building and threw all of her 15-year-old bravado into the punch onto its wall. The fist kept going, right through the wall, and an off-balance Sigrun was sent tumbling face-first into a pile of rubble inside the unsecured building. Panicked, she scrambled back onto her feet immediately and reached for her knife as she automatically took on a crouching defensive stance. Unfortunately, a piece of the building’s faux-brickwork cladding remained as an outsize bracelet on her wrist, impeding her access to her knife. She was forced to look down at her waist instead of inside the target building, as she’d been taught. Adding to her distress, Tor and the overseeing captain Helena Svart strode over to stand over her, while Dagny did her best to stifle her guffaws at Sigrun’s predicament.

As Sigrun raised defiant and mortified violet eyes to her commanding officers, the expedition captain drawled, “Well, trainees, Sigrun Eide here has _cleverly_ located what we hunters call a _crap building._ You’ll come across more than a few in your travels. Unlike Sigrun here,” she gestured to Sigrun, who was now awkwardly standing up and still trying to get the cladding off her wrist, “they are usually harmless, but still be on your guard because smaller trolls and vermin Beasts can burrow inside the walls.” Captain Helena, while nearly a head shorter than Sigrun, still somehow managed to glower down at her. “I suggest you try the next building over if you’re trying to build up your knuckles.”

**Author's Note:**

> I ~~think~~ now know it was Elleth ~~Minutia_R~~ who first bestowed the name Dagny onto No-Arms from Sigrun's flashback, and I am following that headcanon.


End file.
